Re: Fwd: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Sam Russell]

On 25/10/05, Mike Meyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > Knuth also argues in METAFONT that slanted will make it easier for
> > typeface designers to produce multiple faces from a single style.
>
> So can they get a slanted face out of an MM font?

This is my recollection of Knuth's assertion[1].  Then again, those
kinds of big assertions often come with new products (I did it
overnight, the permutations were easy and attractive).  I've never
touched metafont, other than enjoying the beauty of its results,
computer modern.  I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else has made
beautiful families of fonts from metafont.

yours,
Sam R.

[1] Knuth, Donald E. /TeX and METAFONT: new directions in
typesetting/. Bedford, Mass. : Digital Press, 1979. (cyclostyled from
conference papers).

Re: Fwd: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Mike Meyer]

In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Sam Russell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> typed:
> (I assumed the Reply-to: would be the list)

Bad assumption. The list isn't broken.

> Knuth also argues in METAFONT that slanted will make it easier for
> typeface designers to produce multiple faces from a single style.

So can they get a slanted face out of an MM font?

Thanks,
  http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.

Fwd: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Sam Russell]

(I assumed the Reply-to: would be the list)

On 24/10/05, Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Is there any typographical reason why you might want slanted instead of
> italic or vice-versa?

In the original edition describing TeX Knuth is very very strident
about the need for slanted fonts, the wave of the future.  To be
honest, slanted appears to be a very good way to differentiate
input/output in the typography of human-computer interaction.  Reading
early published versions of Knuth makes the typographic rationale
behind slanted clear.  Knuth also argues in METAFONT that slanted will
make it easier for typeface designers to produce multiple faces from a
single style.  Slanted also just feels forcefully, brutally,
ultramodern, like Bauhaus typefaces or London Underground.  I expect
to see early Soviet era designers appear from a montage, shouting in
slanted slogans of better typography through science.  If you want
your readers to expect the avantegarde of suprematism and
constructivism to burst out of your text, set in slanted.

Slanted is not very good at replacing the humanities uses of italics
(/Title/, /mild emphasis/, /foreign words in body text/, etc).  In
humanities texts slanted breaks rules regarding reader familiarity
with typesetting styles, it also breaks the aesthetic beauty of well
set type.  So if we go to the heart of Knuth's initial
research/engineering problem (beautiful typography), then the Slanted
type he pushes so hard in the late 1970s, at least in humanities,
works against him.

Personally, I find that there's a great deal of beauty in well
designed Italic faces.  At the level of readability, I also find the
difference in the format of characters (a, g, etc) provided  by
italic, acts as an extra cue for me that the text has a different
meaning (other than just the slant).

yours,
Sam R.

--
I will give you Tacos, such Tacos as you have never seen.


--
I will give you Tacos, such Tacos as you have never seen.

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Paul]

Karsten Heymann wrote:
>> Also, the italic chapter names in the header at the top of every page
>> (memoir document class) were coming out as an embedded
>> NimbusRomNo9L-Regu-Slant_167 font for some reason. All other italic
>> text was just using a standard Times-Italic non-embedded font.
> 
> Nimbus Roman is the name of the "Times Roman" clone from URW latex ships
> with.

Strange that it would output some text as Times Italic and others as
Nimbus Slanted, then. Maybe it's something to do with the available font
sizes Or maybe a hard-coded font in the "memoir" class? Or maybe one
uses \textsl and the other \textit somewhere inside the class definition?

Is there any typographical reason why you might want slanted instead of
italic or vice-versa?

Paul.

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Karsten Heymann]

Hi,

Paul schrieb:

Also, the italic chapter names in the header at the top of every page
(memoir document class) were coming out as an embedded 
NimbusRomNo9L-Regu-Slant_167 font for some reason. All other italic 
text was just using a standard Times-Italic non-embedded font.


Nimbus Roman is the name of the "Times Roman" clone from URW latex ships
with.


I assume there's some difference between Italic and Slanted - italic
is a properly-designed font but slanted is done programatically by 
shearing the standard roman font maybe?


Nope. Both are font variants, in italic the letters have their own
shapes (i.e. the "a" can be completely different), wheras slated fonts
are "shifted" sideways *by the font designer*.

Yours,
Karsten

--
|  ~ Karsten Heymann ~  | Christian-Albrecht-Universität zu Kiel |
| Fon: +49 431 880-1186 |Netzwerkteam des Ökologiezentrum|
| Fax: +49 431 880-4083 | http://www.ecology.uni-kiel.de |
| - Selbständiger EDV-Dienstleister im Auftrag des ÖZK - |

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Stephen Harris]

- Original Message - 
From: "Johan Ingvast" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Karsten Heymann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Paul" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; 
Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2005 7:16 AM
Subject: Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX



Karsten Heymann wrote:


Is there a way to see which fonts are available to LaTeX?

Try thils link:
http://tug.org/TeXnik/mainFAQ.cgi?file=fonts/fonts
It shows ways of displaying all fonts found on the latex paths.
/johan



There has been some recent posting about poor pdf display
(though the printed output may be ok) and whether it is better
to use pdflatex or dvipdfm. This brings up whether to use Type I
fonts or Type III fonts. Andre Berger wrote about this which I
will quote from the Google search engine (www.google.com) .

Query (>):
Short version:  How do I install the international Type 1 fonts?  (aka 
Computer Modern Super fontset)?



Long version:



Folks, I'm learning LaTeX.  Please forgive any gross inaccuracies in what 
follows.



When I output a PDF from within Lyx, it looks AWFUL in Preview.  It looks 
perfect in Adobe 6.0.




Turns out that Lyx is outputting Type 3 fonts.



To which Andre Berger responded:


Probably so. As this starts a LyX question, first check if you can
use

 LyX - Layout - Document - Font & Size - pslatex


then proceed according to


 LyX - Help - Extended Features - 5.3.6(.2)


and run


 LyX - View - PDF (pdflatex)


to create .pdf files.


You will almost definitely prefer Palatino (serif) or Helvetica
(sans serif) over the "legacy" Computer Modern font then.



According to this website http://www.geocities.com/mobrien_12/lyx.htm the 
best solution is to install the full Type 1 font set from CTAN.


I found it, but I would like to know: 1)How can I check if I already have 
these Type 1 fonts? 2)Where do I install it?  My best guess is: 
/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/fonts/type1/public 3)If I install it, 
do I have to do anything to notify TeTex/Lyx/Texshop/etc?




Let me give a practical answer. "The" standard PS fonts should be
included in TeTeX. In Terminal,

 locate tex|grep font|grep helv


to find, for example, Helvetica. If the locate command fails, run


 sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb


then try again. Chances are you won't have to install anything extra
at this point.


I hope this helps!


-Andre



From the LyX Extended documentation:


5.3.6.2 Why does the text look so bad when viewed with Acrobat 
Reader?Bad Fonts in Acrobat Reader


The problem is that bitmap fonts are displayed poorly by Acrobat Reader. 
When creating a PDF from the LyX file, you need to use outline font instead 
of the default bitmap fonts (in fact, you should also use outline fonts for 
Postscript files). Recent LaTeX distributions come with Postscript® Type 1 
version of the standard (Computer Modern) fonts. pdfLaTeX uses these font by 
default. Dvips doesn't use these fonts by default, so to make it use them, 
add the following to lines to your ~/.dvipsrc file


p+ psfonts.cmz

p+ psfonts.amz

If the default LaTeX font encoding (OT1) is used, nothing else need to be 
done. However, if the T1 font encoding is used, then LaTeX uses the newer EC 
fonts, for which there are no Type1 version. The solution is to use the ae 
package which emulates T1 coded fonts using the standard CM fonts. This is 
done by adding \usepackage{ae,aecompl} to the preamble of the LyX file. 
However, some glyphs are missing from the CM fonts (e.g. eth, thorn), and 
they are taken from the EC fonts. Therefore you get these glyphs as bitmaps.


Note: LyX uses by default the T1 font encoding. If you wish to use the 
default font encoding (this is not recommended, unless you only write 
English documents), clear the field TeX encoding in preferences (tabs 
Outputs, Misc).


An alternate option is to use the standard Postscript® fonts instead of the 
Computer Modern fonts. To do that, you need to select pslatex as the global 
font in the document layout dialog. When using the Postscript® fonts, the 
result PDF file is smaller as the fonts are not saved into the file. 
Furthermore, the Postscript® fonts include all T1 glyphs. On the other hand, 
the Postscript® fonts have no bold symbol font, so poor man's bold must be 
used (see Section [sec:pdfbold]). The Postscript® fonts also look different 
from the Computer Modern fonts.


To sum up, both the Computer Modern and the Postscript® fonts gives good 
results (with few exceptions). The decision of which one to use is a matter 
of taste.


5.3.6.3 Why doesn't the \boldsymbol{} command work when I use 
pslatex?\boldsymbol{} and pslatex


The Postscript® fonts do not have a bold symbol font. The solution is to use 
the \pmb{} (poor man's bold) command.


It is possible to redefine the \boldsymbol command to use \pmb by putting

\renewcommand{\boldsymbol}[1]{\pmb{#1}}

in the preamble.

5.3.6.4 Is it possible to do wri

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Johan Ingvast]

Karsten Heymann wrote:


Is there a way to see which fonts are available to LaTeX?

Try thils link:
http://tug.org/TeXnik/mainFAQ.cgi?file=fonts/fonts
It shows ways of displaying all fonts found on the latex paths.
/johan

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Karsten Heymann]

Hi Paul,

Paul schrieb:

I'm trying to understand exactly how LaTeX handles fonts/typefaces.


Maybe you want to take http://www.tug.org/fonts/ as a starting point. An
extremely good read is the fonts chapter from book "The LaTeX Companion"
2nd. Ed.


Is there a way to see which fonts are available to LaTeX?


No, not in a single place. try 'texdoc psnfss2e' for the "standard"
postscript fonts.

What I need to be sure is that users on different machines running 
Windows or Mac, with different fonts installed, will still be able to

read the PDF document. For example, if they don't have Times or New
Century Schoolbook installed, will they still be able to view them?
Does it matter whether they have the TrueType or Type 1 version of
it?


As already said, that is only a problem if you are using standard
postscript fonts and your latex installation doesn't embed them.


I read that Type 3 fonts are bad, so does it matter that I have a
line beginning "[none]" that says Type 3?


Yes, in type 3 fonts the glyphs ("letters") are rendert into bitmap
graphic which acrobat reader versions prior to ver. 6 render extremely
poor.


Why do some lines begin with what looks like 6 random letters? Is
this an internal name for an embedded font?


Yes, don't care for the names.

Yours,
Karsten


signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Johan Ingvast]

Paul A. Rubin wrote:

Paul wrote:



You said about sticking to basic PDF fonts, but I would have thought
that it would be the other way round - unusual fonts would be *more*
portable because they are actually embedded within the document.



I'm not sure that's necessarily true.  I think it is up to the software 
producing the PDF file to decide whether to embed fonts (either 
"unusual" or standard) or simply to enter the font name someplace in the 
document.  If the font is not embedded and also not installed on the 
viewing machine, then the reader program uses what it thinks is a "close 
enough" font (determined, I think, from tables in the reader program).


If you are using ps2pdf when making the pdf you can make sure the fonts 
are embedded even if the standard fonts are used by adding

  -dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true
to the ps2pdf argument list. (What the 'subsetFont' means is unknown to 
me, but I've been told it should be there).


When sending photo ready copies of conference articles, it is common 
that the conference organizer demands that all fonts are embedded.

/johan

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Paul A. Rubin]

Paul wrote:



You said about sticking to basic PDF fonts, but I would have thought
that it would be the other way round - unusual fonts would be *more*
portable because they are actually embedded within the document.



I'm not sure that's necessarily true.  I think it is up to the software 
producing the PDF file to decide whether to embed fonts (either 
"unusual" or standard) or simply to enter the font name someplace in the 
document.  If the font is not embedded and also not installed on the 
viewing machine, then the reader program uses what it thinks is a "close 
enough" font (determined, I think, from tables in the reader program).


Also, I'm pretty sure (but not positive) that some programs writing PDF 
files will draw characters as bitmaps if the corresponding font is 
neither embedded nor "standard".  That frequently results in rather 
jagged output.


So IMHO using a non-standard font is rolling the dice.

Paul

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Paul]

Stefano Franchi wrote:
> If you are willing to spend a few hours (well, more than a few) with
> Ph. Lehmannn's  FontInstallation Guide, you'll be able to install any
> Postscript Type 1 font you may desire. It consists of a series of
> tutorials for Fontinst. On the other hand, if portability is a concern,
> you should stick to the basic PDF fonts as other have suggested. Acrobat
> reader

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback on fonts. I managed to work out
where some of the strange fonts were coming from:

It was the copyright symbol that was being done as a Type 3 font and
looked a bit jagged. I installed some of the Computer Modern fonts and
it now seems to be embedding the relevant information to the PDF as a
Type 1 font. I guess the standard Type 1 Times font doesn't include a
copyright symbol. It seems to be in the Times New Roman TrueType font
though.

Also, the italic chapter names in the header at the top of every page
(memoir document class) were coming out as an embedded
NimbusRomNo9L-Regu-Slant_167 font for some reason. All other italic text
was just using a standard Times-Italic non-embedded font.

I assume there's some difference between Italic and Slanted - italic is
a properly-designed font but slanted is done programatically by shearing
the standard roman font maybe?

You said about sticking to basic PDF fonts, but I would have thought
that it would be the other way round - unusual fonts would be *more*
portable because they are actually embedded within the document.

I'll check out the guides at http://www.tug.org/applications/fontinst/
in more detail.

Paul.

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Stefano Franchi]

On Oct 21, 2005, at 8:35 AM, Rich Shepard wrote:


On Fri, 21 Oct 2005, Paul wrote:


Most of my potential readership is going to be using Adobe Acrobat on
Windows I imagine. So if I use Times, will that be treated as 
different

from Times New Roman and cause problems for Windows users, or will it
silently substitute the font (possibly causing slight differences in 
the
output?) Is it best for maximum portability to somehow force even 
standard

fonts to be embedded in PDFs? This is assuming a fairly large document
where the extra space taken by an embedded font wouldn't be 
significant.


Paul,

  I cannot directly address your questions as I gave up trying to 
completely
understand the new font system in LaTeX, and gave up about half-way 
through
the fontinst process. However, I can tell you this: I've had no 
complaints
over the years that I've used Palatino as the base text font in my 
documents
and people have read the pdf output on machines running various 
flavors of

Microsoft ... or Apple.



If you are willing to spend a few hours (well, more than a few) 
with Ph. Lehmannn's  FontInstallation Guide, you'll be able to install 
any Postscript Type 1 font you may desire. It consists of a series of 
tutorials for Fontinst. On the other hand, if portability is a concern, 
you should stick to the basic PDF fonts as other have suggested. 
Acrobat reader




  I've also used Bitstream Amerigo as the text font in documents 
written in
OpenOffice.org and exported as pdf files. Again, no client, agency 
staffer,

or anyone else has complained about a readability issue.

  In brief, it's been a non-issue.

Rich

--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President |   Author of "Quantifying 
Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM) |  Impact Assessments Using 
Fuzzy Logic"
 Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 
503-667-8863



__
Stefano Franchi
Department of Philosophy  Ph:  (64) 9 373-7599 x83940
University Of Auckland  Fax: (64) 9 373-7408
Private Bag 92019   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Auckland
New Zealand 

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Paul A. Rubin]

Paul wrote:

Angus Leeming wrote:


http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/pdf/six.htm
explains that the PDF standard defines 14 fonts as "standard". A
standard-conforming reader will be able to display glyphs in these
fonts even if they are not embedded in the document.



OK so does that mean those fonts (Times, Helvetica, Courier and
variants) are built into the reader, or that it just expects them to be
available? For example on Windows machines they generally have Times New
Roman and Arial TrueType fonts rather than Times and Helvetica.

Most of my potential readership is going to be using Adobe Acrobat on
Windows I imagine. So if I use Times, will that be treated as different
from Times New Roman and cause problems for Windows users, or will it
silently substitute the font (possibly causing slight differences in the
output?) Is it best for maximum portability to somehow force even
standard fonts to be embedded in PDFs? This is assuming a fairly large
document where the extra space taken by an embedded font wouldn't be
significant.

Paul.

I use either the ae or pslatex fonts as a rule, and I've never had any 
problem with the PDFs being difficult to read or "ugly" on other 
machines (typically either a classroom PC or a student's PC).  With 
other choices, you run a greater risk that the desired font is 
unavailable, in which case Acrobat Reader will map it to a different 
font if possible.


Paul

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Rich Shepard]

On Fri, 21 Oct 2005, Paul wrote:


Most of my potential readership is going to be using Adobe Acrobat on
Windows I imagine. So if I use Times, will that be treated as different
from Times New Roman and cause problems for Windows users, or will it
silently substitute the font (possibly causing slight differences in the
output?) Is it best for maximum portability to somehow force even standard
fonts to be embedded in PDFs? This is assuming a fairly large document
where the extra space taken by an embedded font wouldn't be significant.


Paul,

  I cannot directly address your questions as I gave up trying to completely
understand the new font system in LaTeX, and gave up about half-way through
the fontinst process. However, I can tell you this: I've had no complaints
over the years that I've used Palatino as the base text font in my documents
and people have read the pdf output on machines running various flavors of
Microsoft ... or Apple.

  I've also used Bitstream Amerigo as the text font in documents written in
OpenOffice.org and exported as pdf files. Again, no client, agency staffer,
or anyone else has complained about a readability issue.

  In brief, it's been a non-issue.

Rich

--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President |   Author of "Quantifying Environmental
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM) |  Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic"
 Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Angus Leeming]

Paul wrote:

> Angus Leeming wrote:
>> http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/pdf/six.htm
>> explains that the PDF standard defines 14 fonts as "standard". A
>> standard-conforming reader will be able to display glyphs in these
>> fonts even if they are not embedded in the document.
> 
> OK so does that mean those fonts (Times, Helvetica, Courier and
> variants) are built into the reader, or that it just expects them to
> be available? For example on Windows machines they generally have
> Times New Roman and Arial TrueType fonts rather than Times and
> Helvetica.

The experts are to be found at the usenet newsgroup comp.text.pdf

Angus

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Paul]

Angus Leeming wrote:
> http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/pdf/six.htm
> explains that the PDF standard defines 14 fonts as "standard". A
> standard-conforming reader will be able to display glyphs in these
> fonts even if they are not embedded in the document.

OK so does that mean those fonts (Times, Helvetica, Courier and
variants) are built into the reader, or that it just expects them to be
available? For example on Windows machines they generally have Times New
Roman and Arial TrueType fonts rather than Times and Helvetica.

Most of my potential readership is going to be using Adobe Acrobat on
Windows I imagine. So if I use Times, will that be treated as different
from Times New Roman and cause problems for Windows users, or will it
silently substitute the font (possibly causing slight differences in the
output?) Is it best for maximum portability to somehow force even
standard fonts to be embedded in PDFs? This is assuming a fairly large
document where the extra space taken by an embedded font wouldn't be
significant.

Paul.

Re: Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Angus Leeming]

Paul wrote:
> What I need to be sure is that users on different machines running
> Windows or Mac, with different fonts installed, will still be able
> to read the PDF document. For example, if they don't have Times or
> New Century Schoolbook installed, will they still be able to view
> them? Does it matter whether they have the TrueType or Type 1
> version of it?

http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/pdf/six.htm
explains that the PDF standard defines 14 fonts as "standard". A
standard-conforming reader will be able to display glyphs in these
fonts even if they are not embedded in the document.

Angus

Choice of fonts in LaTeX

[Paul]

I'm trying to understand exactly how LaTeX handles fonts/typefaces.

Is there a way to see which fonts are available to LaTeX? I can see
several fonts in a /usr/share/texmf/fonts directory (I'm using Debian
Linux) and trying \usepackage{fontname} works for most of them, but not
all. There's also a dropdown box in LyX but that doesn't seem to have
all of them.

Is there a difference between fonts that are available through \usefont
and those available through \usepackage{fontname}?

Also, I'm not totally clear on whether the font information is embedded
into the PDF output. For example, using pdflatex I've created some PDF
documents with different fonts and run "pdffonts" over them and get
output like this:

name type emb sub uni object ID
  --- --- --- -
Times-Roman  Type 1   no  no  no  43  0
[none]   Type 3   yes no  no  58  0
Times-Bold   Type 1   no  no  no  64  0
Times-BoldItalic Type 1   no  no  no  82  0
MYDKWH+NimbusRomNo9L-Regu-Slant_167  Type 1   yes yes no  90  0
Times-Italic Type 1   no  no  no 317  0

 and:

name type emb sub uni object ID
  --- --- --- -
LWIFAV+CenturySchL-Roma  Type 1   yes yes no  44  0
[none]   Type 3   yes no  no  59  0
AJYORR+CenturySchL-Bold  Type 1   yes yes no  66  0
VICUAD+CenturySchL-BoldItal  Type 1   yes yes no  85  0
WMHNKX+CenturySchL-Roma-Slant_167Type 1   yes yes no  93  0
WZNAPE+CenturySchL-Ital  Type 1   yes yes no 341  0

What I need to be sure is that users on different machines running
Windows or Mac, with different fonts installed, will still be able to
read the PDF document. For example, if they don't have Times or New
Century Schoolbook installed, will they still be able to view them? Does
it matter whether they have the TrueType or Type 1 version of it?

I read that Type 3 fonts are bad, so does it matter that I have a line
beginning "[none]" that says Type 3?

Why do some lines begin with what looks like 6 random letters? Is this
an internal name for an embedded font?

The "emb" column means embedded - that means it won't matter if the
recipient doesn't have that font installed, right? - because all
information about the shape, kerning, ligatures, etc. is stored inside
the PDF? Why has it embedded the New Century fonts but not most of the
Times ones? Because it's less common?

I would have thought that embedding the font information would take a
lot of space, but the files don't seem to be that much bigger - about
50K larger - does that seem about right?

The pdffonts man page suggests it's possible to embed TrueType fonts in
a PDF. I see some reference to doing this (looks a bit complex) e.g.
here: http://ipe.compgeom.org/pdftex_1.html. What are the relative
merits of using Type 1 vs. TrueType in a PDF?

thanks,

Paul.